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Meta’s fact-checking partners say they were ‘blindsided’ by the company’s decision abandon third-party fact-checking on Facebook, Instagram and Threads in favor of a community Notes model, and some say they are now shaken to understand if they can survive the hole that this leaves in their funding.
“We heard the news like everyone else,” says Alan Duke, co-founder and editor-in-chief of the fact-checking site Lead Stories, which began working with Meta in 2019. “No advance notice.”
The news that Meta no longer planned to use their services was announced a blog post by global business leader Joel Kaplan on Tuesday morning and a video accompanied by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Instead, the company plans to rely on X-style Community Notes, which allow users to flag content they think is inaccurate or requires further explanation.
Meta partners with dozens of fact-checking organizations and newsrooms around the globe, 10 of which are based in the United States, where Meta’s new rules will first be applied.
“We were blindsided by this,” Jesse Stiller, the managing editor of Meta’s fact-checking partner Check Your Fact, tells WIRED. His organization started working with Meta in 2019 and they have 10 people working in the press room. “This was totally unexpected and out of left field for us. We didn’t know this decision was being considered until Mark dropped the video overnight.”
News organizations that have partnered with Meta to address the spread of disinformation on the platform since 2016 are scrambling to understand how this change will impact them.
“We have no idea what the future looks like for the website going forward,” says Stiller.
Duke says Lead Stories had a different revenue stream and most of its operations were outside the US, but says the decision would still have an impact on them. “The most painful part of this is the loss of some very good journalists, who will no longer be paid for researching false claims found on Meta platforms,” says Duke.
For others the financial implications are even more dire. An editor at a U.S. fact-checking organization that works with Metas, who was not authorized to speak on the record, told WIRED that Meta’s decision “will ultimately wipe us out.”
Meta did not respond to a request to comment on the allegations of its partners or the financial impact that its decision would have on some organizations.
“Meta owes nothing to the fact-checkers, but it knows that by pulling this partnership, it is removing a very significant source of funding for the ecosystem around the world,” says Alexios Mantzarlis, who helped establish the first partnerships between the fact-checkers of facts and Facebook between 2015. and 2019 as director of the International Fact-Checking Network.
Meta’s partners were also angered by Zuckerberg’s allegation that fact-checkers have become too biased.
According to Duke, it’s disappointing to hear Mark Zuckerberg accuse organizations in the US’s third-party fact-checking program Meta of being “too political.” “Let me check this. Lead Stories follows the highest standards of journalism and ethics required by the International Fact-Checking Network’s code of principles. We fact-check regardless of where on the political spectrum a false claim originates.”
